Albert DeSalvo

(Redirected from Albert De Salvo) American rapist and suspected serial killer (1931–1973)

Albert DeSalvo
DeSalvo after escaping Bridgewater State Hospital and being caught in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1967
Born	Albert Henry DeSalvo (1931-09-03)September 3, 1931 Chelsea, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	November 25, 1973(1973-11-25) (aged 42) Walpole, Massachusetts, U.S.
Cause of death	Stabbing
Other names	The Boston Strangler Mad Strangler of Boston The Measuring Man The Green Man

Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment
Details
Victims	1 (confirmed), 12 more (suspected)
Span of crimes	June 14, 1962 – January 4, 1964
Country	United States
State(s)	Massachusetts
Date apprehended	October 27, 1964

Albert Henry DeSalvo (September 3, 1931 – November 25, 1973) was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", a serial killer who murdered thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. Lack of physical evidence supported DeSalvo's confession, and he was only prosecuted in 1967 for a series of unrelated rapes, for which he was convicted and imprisoned until his death in 1973. DeSalvo's claims to have murdered multiple women was disputed, and debates continued regarding which crimes he truly had committed.

By the early 21st century, techniques for DNA capture and analysis could allow for the re-investigation of some criminal cases. In July 2013, an analysis of semen found around the body of Mary Sullivan, the last of the Strangler's victims, was matched to DNA obtained from DeSalvo's nephew. Because men who are descended from a common male ancestor carry the same y-DNA, investigators believed that this finding linked DeSalvo to the killing of Sullivan. The DNA match excluded 99.9% of the remaining population. Later that month, authorities exhumed DeSalvo's body and found that his DNA was a match.

Early life

Albert DeSalvo was born on September 3, 1931, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, as the third of six children to Charlotte (née Roberts) and Frank DeSalvo. DeSalvo's father was a violent alcoholic who abused his wife; in one of the many times he attacked her in front of the children, he knocked out all her teeth and bent her fingers back until they broke. He would also bring home prostitutes and engage in sexual acts with them in front of his wife and young children.

The young DeSalvo began torturing animals as a child. In early adolescence, he engaged in acts of petty theft and shoplifting, frequently crossing paths with the law. In November 1943, the 12-year-old DeSalvo was first arrested for battery and robbery. The following month he was sent to the Lyman School for Boys. In October 1944, DeSalvo was paroled and started working as a delivery boy. In August 1946, nearly fifteen years old, he was returned to the Lyman School after being convicted of auto theft.

After completing his second sentence, DeSalvo joined the United States Army. He was honorably discharged after his first tour of duty. DeSalvo re-enlisted and, despite being tried in a court-martial, was again honorably discharged. He served as a Military Police sergeant with the 2nd Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

At the time of the Boston Strangler murders, DeSalvo lived at 11 Florence Street Park in Malden, Massachusetts, across the street from the junction of Florence and Clement streets.

Murders

Victims

Name	Age	Discovery date	Finding place
Anna Elza Slesers	55	June 14, 1962	77 Gainsborough Street, Boston
Mary Mullen	85	June 28, 1962	1435 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Nina Nioma Nichols	68	June 30, 1962	1940 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Helen Elizabeth Blake	65	June 30, 1962	73 Newhall Street, Lynn
Edes "Ida" Irga	75	August 19, 1962	7 Grove Street, Boston
Jane Sullivan	67	August 21, 1962	435 Columbia Road, Boston
Sophie L. Clark	20	December 5, 1962	315 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Patricia Jane Bissette	23	December 31, 1962	515 Park Drive, Boston
Mary Ann Brown	69	March 6, 1963	319 Park Street, Lawrence
Beverly Florence Samans	23	May 6, 1963	4 University Road, Cambridge
Marie Evelina "Evelyn" Corbin	57	September 8, 1963	224 Lafayette Street, Salem
Joann Marie Graff	23	November 25, 1963	54 Essex Street, Lawrence
Mary Anne Sullivan	19	January 4, 1964	44-A Charles Street, Boston

Imprisonment and death

DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison in 1967. In February of that year, he escaped with two fellow inmates from Bridgewater State Hospital, triggering a full-scale manhunt. A note was found on his bunk addressed to the superintendent. In it, DeSalvo stated he had escaped to focus attention on the conditions in the hospital and his own situation. Three days after the escape he called his lawyer to turn himself in. His lawyer then sent the police to re-arrest him in Lynn, Massachusetts. Following the escape, he was transferred to the maximum security prison known at the time as Walpole, where he later recanted his Strangler confessions.

On November 25, 1973, he was found stabbed to death in the prison infirmary. Robert Wilson, who was associated with the Winter Hill Gang, was tried for DeSalvo's murder, but the trial ended in a hung jury. Bailey later stated that DeSalvo was killed for selling amphetamines in the prison for less than the inmate-enforced syndicate price.

DeSalvo's papers are housed in the Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. His papers include his correspondence, mainly with the members of the Bailey family, and gifts sent to the Baileys of jewelry and leatherwork crafted by DeSalvo while in prison.

DNA evidence

On July 11, 2013, Boston law enforcement officials announced that DNA evidence had linked DeSalvo to the rape and murder of 19-year-old Mary Sullivan. DeSalvo's remains were exhumed, and DNA test results proved DeSalvo was the source of seminal fluid recovered at the scene of Sullivan's 1964 murder.

Controversies

Doubts

Though DeSalvo was conclusively linked to Mary Sullivan's murder, doubts remain as to whether he committed all of the Boston Strangler homicides — and whether another killer could still be at large. When he confessed, people who knew him personally did not believe him capable of the crimes. It was also noted that the women allegedly killed by "The Strangler" were of widely varying ages, social status and ethnicities, and that their deaths involved inconsistent modi operandi.

Susan Kelly, an author who has had access to the files of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' "Strangler Bureau", argued in her book that the murders were the work of several killers, rather than that of a single individual. Another author, former FBI profiler Robert Ressler, has said, "You're putting together so many different patterns that it's inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual."

In 2000, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, an attorney specializing in forensic cases from Marblehead, Massachusetts, began representing the families of DeSalvo and of Mary A. Sullivan, a 19-year-old who was among the Strangler's final victims in 1964. A former print journalist, Sharp obtained court approval to exhume both Sullivan and DeSalvo for DNA testing, filed several court actions to obtain information and physical evidence from the government, and worked with various film producers to create documentaries so as to better educate the public. Through these efforts, Sharp was able to identify several inconsistencies between DeSalvo's confessions and the crime scene evidence.

For example, DeSalvo did not, as he claimed, strangle Sullivan with his bare hands; instead, she was strangled by ligature. Forensic pathologist Michael Baden noted that DeSalvo incorrectly stated the time of the victim's death—a detail that DeSalvo got wrong in several of the murders, said Susan Kelly. Finally, James Starrs, professor of forensic science at George Washington University, told a news conference that a semen-like substance on her body did not match DeSalvo's DNA and could not associate him with her murder.

The victim's nephew, Casey Sherman, wrote a book, A Rose for Mary (2003), in which he expanded upon the evidence—and leads from Kelly's book—to conclude that DeSalvo could not be responsible for her death, and to try to determine her killer's identity. Sharp continues to work on the case for the DeSalvo family.

On July 11, 2013, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley stated that DNA testing had revealed a "familial match" between DeSalvo and forensic evidence in the Sullivan killing, leading authorities to request the exhumation of DeSalvo's body in order to provide a definitive forensic link of DeSalvo to the murder of Mary Sullivan. Nine days later, investigators announced that the comparison of crime scene evidence and DeSalvo's DNA "leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan".

George Nassar

George Nassar, the inmate DeSalvo reportedly confessed to, is among the suspects in the case. In 1967 he was given a life sentence for the shooting death of an Andover, Massachusetts, gas station attendant. In 2008 and again in 2009, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied Nassar's appeals of his 1967 conviction. In 2006, Nassar argued in court filings that he had been unable to make his case in a previous appeal, because he was in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, in the 1980s and therefore did not have access to Massachusetts legal resources. The court noted that Nassar had returned to Massachusetts in 1983, yet he did not plead his case for more than two decades. Nassar also filed a motion for a new trial in Essex County, which was denied, as was his 2011 petition to the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari.

Ames Robey, a former prison psychiatrist who analyzed both DeSalvo and Nassar, has called Nassar a misogynistic, psychopathic killer and a far more likely suspect in the Strangler murders than DeSalvo. Several followers of the case have also declared Nassar to be the real Strangler, claiming that he fed details of the murders to DeSalvo. DeSalvo, they speculated, knew that he would spend the rest of his life in jail for the "Green Man" attacks, and "confessed" so that Nassar could collect reward money that they would split—thus providing support to DeSalvo's wife and two children. Another motive was his tremendous need for notoriety. DeSalvo hoped that the case would make him world-famous; Robey testified that "Albert so badly wanted to be the Strangler".

In a 1999 interview with The Boston Globe, Nassar denied involvement in the murders, saying that the speculation had destroyed his chances for parole. "I had nothing to do with it", he said, "I'm convicted under the table, behind the scenes."

Other

In 1971, the Texas legislature unanimously passed a resolution honoring DeSalvo for his work in "population control"—after the vote, Waco Representative Tom Moore Jr. admitted that he had submitted the legislation as an April Fool's Day joke against his colleagues—his declared intent was to prove that they pass legislation with no due diligence given to researching the issues beforehand. Having made his point, he withdrew the resolution.

In popular culture

Film

The 1964 film The Strangler, starring Victor Buono, was based on the Boston Strangler Murders.
DeSalvo was the subject of the 1968 Hollywood film The Boston Strangler, starring Tony Curtis as DeSalvo, and Henry Fonda and George Kennedy as the homicide detectives who apprehend him. The movie was highly fictionalized. It assumed that DeSalvo was guilty and portrayed him as someone suffering from multiple personality disorder (MPD) who committed the murders while in a psychotic state. DeSalvo was never diagnosed with, nor even suspected of, having MPD.
The 2008 movie Boston Strangler: The Untold Story, focused on DeSalvo and told the story of the Boston murders. David Faustino played DeSalvo in the film.
The 2023 movie Boston Strangler. Told from the point of view of the reporter Loretta McLaughlin played by Keira Knightley. DeSalvo was played by David Dastmalchian.

Television

In the series finale of 1995 CBS show American Gothic, the show's primary antagonist, Lucas Buck, conjures DeSalvo's spirit to act as an instrument of assassination. DeSalvo was played by Gareth Williams.
In the Season 3 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit entitled "Prodigy" the suspect, Harry Baker, mentions DeSalvo's animal torture technique.
A waxwork of DeSalvo was featured in an episode of British comedy series Psychoville. The waxwork comes to life in a fantasy sequence (along with those of John George Haigh, John Christie, and Jack the Ripper), trying to persuade protagonist David Sowerbutts to kill a man by strangling. The others accuse DeSalvo of having several personalities, referencing the 1968 movie. He was played by Eric Loren.

Music

The song "Dirty Water", by the Standells, makes a reference to the Boston Strangler.
The song "The Boston Strangler" by heavy metal band B. F. Raid documents DeSalvo's murders
Death metal/grindcore band Macabre explains DeSalvo's murders in their song "The Boston Strangler" on their album Sinister Slaughter (1993).
The song "Midnight Rambler", by the Rolling Stones, makes a reference to the Boston Strangler.
The song "Albert De Salvo", by Sansar Salvo on his album Adrenalin (2008) tells the story of the Boston Strangler.